The United States-México Border Health Commission (BHC or Commission) was created as a binational health commission in July 2000, with the signing of an agreement by the Secretary of Health and Human Services of the United States and the Secretary of Health of México. On December 21, 2004, the Commission was designated as a Public International Organization by Executive Order of the President.

The mission of the United States-México Border Health Commission is to provide international leadership to optimize health and quality of life along the U.S.-México border.

The Commission is comprised of the federal secretaries of health, the chief health officers of the ten border states, and prominent community health professionals from both nations. The BHC has the unique opportunity to bring together the two countries and its border states to solve border health problems. The Commission provides the necessary leadership to develop coordinated and binational actions that will improve the health and quality of life on the border.

Tijuana is loaded with struggles and stories of denunciation. If you begin with the wall, you see migration, police abuse toward migrants, separation of families and the Border Patrol. You can follow the wall to the barrios where it stops them from growing any farther. In the heart of the barrio is resistance. In the distance are the maquiladoras and their world: 47 industrial parks with 200,000 workers who, in shifts sometimes from three to eight, sometimes two shifts of twelve hours, continue production 24 hours a day.

It’s a maquilapolis, like the title of the documentary that narrates the geography of a city that, more and more, lives and grows for the maquiladoras. In the neighborhoods is the demand for housing, water, electricity; the organizing of the residents. And closer in to the center of the city the organizations: a graphic rebellion, a feminist collective, labor organizations. The stories of Tijuana are found, their struggles, many led by women, accompany and strengthen each other.

I. Maquiladoras

Tijuana: The Mexican Dream?

“OUTSIDE: OTAY INDUSTRIAL PARK, TIJUANA – LATE AFTERNOON

Images with buses, streets, the exodus of workers from their workplaces, where they spend 8 to 10 hours daily, from Monday to Saturday. Images of maquiladoras, of bridges, of streets full of lights and dust, of conglomerations of people who board buses or taxis, of people who ride standing up in the buses and disappear in the sea of vehicles of public transportation. Images of advertisements they see every day. Images of men and women who arrive tired to their homes, the fatigue evident. Images of men and women who are received by their children with hugs…” FADE OUT

(FRAGMENT OF A SCRIPT WRITTEN BY A FEMALE MAQUILADORA WORKER)

Mago: I’m from Puebla.

Manuel: I come from Chiapas.

Carmen: I was born in Tapachula.

Rogelio: I’m from Michoacan.

All work or worked for many years in the maquiladoras and form part of the Information Center for Working Women and Men (CITTAC), a collective affiliated with the Zapatista Other Campaign in Tijuana.

Another Manuel: I’m from Tlaxcala.

Another Rogelio: From Motozintla, Chiapas.

Hugo: From Acapulco.

They tell how them came here, to the northernmost part of the country, attracted by the stories that are told of Tijuana: “that here they don’t bother to pick up dropped dollars from the floor, that here there’s an abundance of well paid work,” says Mago. Manuel, the one from Tlaxcala, adds, “They tell us that here one can get a good car for almost nothing, that one will have work, a house, everything. It was the ‘American dream,’ only without the risks of crossing to the other side, the American dream in Mexico.”

Rogelio, not the one from Michoacan, but the one from Chiapas, tells how they were brought up here by people from the maquiladoras: “Buses arrived to Motozintla and we were invited to work at the northern border, they told is we’d earn a lot. I was earning 30 to 40 pesos farming in Chiapas, and that’s why I came. The bus I got on was brought from a maquiladora, by a woman, and that’s how 40 of us from where I’m from came, also my in-laws came. They have both ends of the business, because the woman of the bus also was renting apartments in Tijuana for those of us who came from far away.”

Four female workers, unfairly fired and victims of workplace abuse, have caged themselves and sewn their lips shut as they launch a hunger strike and one threatens to burn herself alive in a dramatic protest against the multinational corporation Samsung.

UNHEARD-OF VIOLATION OF THE LABOUR AND HUMAN RIGHTS OF WORKERS OF THE KOREAN BUSINESS

WE MUST PREVENT THIS RIGHTFUL PROTEST BECOMING A TRAGEDY

Four female workers, unfairly fired and victims of workplace abuse, have caged themselves and sewn their lips shut as they launch a hunger strike and threatens to burn herself alive in a dramatic protest against the multinational corporation Samsung, funded by Korean capital which is currently constructing a plant for the extraction of natural gas in the Mexican port of Manzanillo, in the state of Colima.

Madaí Díaz Rodríguez, Sandra Gómez, Lourdes Zamora y Elvira Orozco worked in the kitchen of the Ingeniería Civil construction company, subcontracted by the multinational and whilst working were victims of constant abuse and mistreatment which escalated to daily verbal and physical violence from their Korean bosses and foremen. To these facts there can also be added multiple instances of arbitrary treatment and labor abuses such as the imposition of 12-hour days, with no pay for the extra hours which were their legal right. This situation is a daily reality for the hundreds of workers who lend their services to the aforementioned company.

The inhuman and degrading conditions imposed on both male and female workers have already resulted in a diversity of protests, including a strike, without any affect on the violation of human and labour rights. On the 3rd June of last year, Madaí Díaz, a single mother workign as a cook, initiated the protests against the abitrary sacking and beatings dealt out to her by Korean employees. In the first instance she locked herself in a cage and sewed shut her lips, before days later caging herself again along with her two children, after which she officially denounced her aggressors, an accusation that has not had any effect.

Last July 6 the compañera Madaí, who had been reinstalled, was once again attacked and thrown out of work; failing to receive a positive response to her demands for justice from either the labor authorities or her union, she returned to the cage, accompanied by her workmates who had also been fired. They are currently on hunger strike and have sewn their lips shut. Furthermore, Madaí has declared her readiness to take the extreme action of setting herself on fire in the event of receiving an unsatisfactory answer to her demands.

It must be mentioned that the construction of the gas plant in Manzanillo has itself provoked multiple instances of rejection, both for the serious environmental effects it will impose on the coastal and lagoon region into which it will be embedded, and for those that it will cause to the economy and life of the fishing towns of the zone.

As can be observed, this is a situation of serious conflict and the potential exists or it to worsen, with even greater effects on the health, physical integrity and life of the compañeras in protest. All this is caused, needless to say, by the violatory and merciless infringement of every human and labor norm on the part of the transnational business and its representatives.

Faced with the events related herein, the solidarity of all organizations is an urgent necessity. Coordinated and determined action is required to oblige the bosses of this transnational to desist from their arbitrary actions, to demand that the governmental authorities that cease their indolence and intervene to achieve a solution and, above all, to prevent a dramatic end to this conflict.

We ask all organizations to declare their demands through the sending of communiqués to the following:

On behalf of our organization, (___________), we wish to communicate that we have been made aware of the difficult situation of conflict that confronts the workers Madaí Díaz Rodriguez, Sandra Gómez, Lourdes Zamora and Elvira Orozco, who are currently on hunger strike in protest at the unwarranted dismissal and the abuses to which they have been subjected by the business Civil Engineering and, through this, by the transnational business Samsung.

The extreme measures to which the dismissed workers have been forced are, according to our information, due to the situation of generalized violation of their human and labor rights that they have suffered, the same that has arrived at acts of violence, harassment and other aggressions and that is also suffered by the workers employed in the construction of the gas plant in the Port of Manzanillo.

By these means we hereby declare our most emphatic solidarity with the compañeras and their protest, as well as our rejection of the illegal practices to which they and their fellow workers have been subjected. For such motive we request your immediate intervention for:

•An immediate and satisfactory solution to the workers' demands

•The cessation of all violation of human and labor rights of the workers concerned and of all those working in the aforementioned companies

•Legal redress for those responsible for the aggressions to which we have made reference; and,

•Above all, and as a matter of urgency, that you act to ensure that this situation does not end tragically and affect still further the physical integrity and health of said workers.

In the expectation of receiving a swift and positive response from yourselves to that laid out above, we remain attentively yours,

Many companies with manufacturing plants in the Tijuana, Mexico, area have administration or operations facilities in San Diego County. The facilities contribute greatly to the local economy and add to the region's importance as a manufacturing area.

Americas ProgramInstitute for Transnational Social Change - UCLAJuly 2011By David BaconContentsIntroductionThe Hidden History of Mexico/U.S. Labor SolidarityLabor Law Reform – A Key Battle for Mexican Unions TodayThe Rebirth of Solidarity on the BorderGrowing Ties Between Mexican and U.S. LaborImmigration and the Culture of SolidarityIn Conclusion

Introduction

In the period since the North American Free Trade Agreement has come into effect, the economies of the United States and Mexico have become more integrated than ever. Through Plan Merida and partnerships on security, the military and the drug war, the political and economic policies pursued by the U.S. and Mexican governments are more coordinated than they’ve ever been.

Working people on both sides of the border are not only affected by this integration. Workers and their unions in many ways are its object. These policies seek to maximize profits and push wages and benefits to the bottom, manage the flow of people displaced as a result, roll back rights and social benefits achieved over decades, and weaken working class movements in both countries.

All this makes cooperation and solidarity across the U.S./Mexico border more important than ever. After a quarter century in which the development of solidarity relationships was interrupted during the cold war, unions and workers are once again searching out their counterparts and finding effective and appropriate ways to support each other.

This paper is not a survey of all the efforts that have taken place, especially since the

NAFTA debate restarted the solidarity process in the early 1990s. Instead, it seeks to set out some questions, and invite responses and contributions from people involved in this cross border movement. Among these questions are the following:

What is the history of cross-border solidarity? How can we discard the blinders forged by the cold war, and expand our vision of what is possible?

How is the political context changing on both sides of the border? Why is solidarity a necessary response to political and economic challenges?

One of our biggest advantages is the movement of people from Mexico to the U.S. and back.

What part do migrants and the struggle for their rights play in solidarity between workers of both countries?

Editor's Note: This is the first installment of a series on border solidarity by journalist and immigration activist David Bacon. This article and subsequent installments were originally published in the Institute for Transnational Social Change's report Building a Culture of Cross-Border Solidarity. To download a PDF of the entire report, visit the Americas Program website.

Introduction

In the period since the North American Free Trade Agreement has come into effect, the economies of the United States and Mexico have become more integrated than ever. Through Plan Merida and partnerships on security, the military and the drug war, the political and economic policies pursued by the U.S. and Mexican governments are more coordinated than they've ever been.

Working people on both sides of the border are not only affected by this integration. Workers and their unions in many ways are its object. These policies seek to maximize profits and push wages and benefits to the bottom, manage the flow of people displaced as a result, roll back rights and social benefits achieved over decades, and weaken working class movements in both countries.

All this makes cooperation and solidarity across the U.S./Mexico border more important than ever. After a quarter century in which the development of solidarity relationships was interrupted during the cold war, unions and workers are once again searching out their counterparts and finding effective and appropriate ways to support each other.

This paper is not a survey of all the efforts that have taken place, especially since the NAFTA debate restarted the solidarity process in the early 1990s. Instead, it seeks to set out some questions, and invite responses and contributions from people involved in this cross border movement. Among these questions are the following:

What is the history of cross-border solidarity? How can we discard the blinders forged by the cold war, and expand our vision of what is possible?

How is the political context changing on both sides of the border? Why is solidarity a necessary response to political and economic challenges?

One of our biggest advantages is the movement of people from Mexico to the U.S. and back. What part do migrants and the struggle for their rights play in solidarity between workers of both countries?

Editor's Note: This is the second installment of a series on border solidarity by journalist and immigration activist David Bacon. This article and subsequent installments were originally published in the Institute for Transnational Social Change's report Building a Culture of Cross-Border Solidarity. To download a PDF of the entire report, visit the Americas Program website.

Changing Mexico's labor law threatens the lives of millions of workers. It would cement the power of a group of industrialists who have been on the political offensive for decades, and who now control Mexico's presidency and national government. "Labor law reform will only benefit the country's oligarchs," claims Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who most Mexicans think won the last presidential election in 2006, as candidate of the left-wing Party of the Democratic Revolution. Napoleon Gomez Urrutia, head of the miner's union who was forced into exile in Canada in 2006, says Mexico's old governing party, the Party of the Institutionalized Revolution (PRI), which lost control of the presidency in 2000, "is trying to assure its return by making this gift to big business, putting an end to labor rights."

In part, the change is drastic because on paper, at least, the rights of Mexican workers are extensive, deriving from the Revolution that ended in 1920. At a time when workers in the U.S. still had no law that recognized the legality of unions, Article 123 of the Mexican Constitution spelled out labor rights. Workers have the right to jobs and permanent status once they're hired. If they're laid off, they have the right to severance pay. They have rights to housing, health care, and training. In a legal strike, they can string flags across the doors of a factory or workplace, and even the owner can't enter until the dispute is settled. Strikebreaking is prohibited.

Editor's Note: This is the third article of a series on border solidarity by journalist and immigration activist David Bacon. This article and subsequent stories were originally published in the Institute for Transnational Social Change's report Building a Culture of Cross-Border Solidarity. To download a PDF of the entire report, visit the Americas Program website.

The growth of cross-border solidarity today is taking place at a time when U.S. penetration of Mexico is growing - economically, politically, and even militarily. While the relationship between the U.S. and Mexico has it's own special characteristics, it is also part of a global system of production, distribution and consumption. It is not just a bilateral relationship.

Jobs go from the U.S. and Canada to Mexico in order to cut labor costs. But from Mexico those same jobs go China or Bangladesh or dozens of other countries, where labor costs are even lower. As important, the threat to move those jobs, experienced by workers in the U.S. from the 1970s onwards, are now common in Mexico. Those threats force concessions on wages. In Sony's huge Nuevo Laredo factory, for instance, that threat was used to make workers agree to an indefinite temporary employment status, even though Mexican law prohibited it.

Editor’s Note: This is the fourth article of a series on border solidarity by journalist and immigration activist David Bacon. All articles in the series were originally published in the Institute for Transnational Social Change’s report Building a Culture of Cross-Border Solidarity. To download a PDF of the entire report, click here.

IN Mexico, the NAFTA debate led to the organization of the Action Network Opposing Free Trade (RMALC), which in turn helped to spark the relationship between the U.E. and the Authentic Labor Front (FAT). That relationship, examined in detail in several books, remains a model for solidarity between two unions, based on equality and mutual interest, preserving each union’s ability to make its own decisions autonomously. It has been a relationship based on real campaigns on the ground – organizing drives, strikes, and resistance to proposals like the PRI labor law reform. Rank-and-file workers in both unions have played an important part in those efforts.

In the solidarity upsurge of the late 1990s onwards, other unions also have found counterparts across the border, and tried to develop ongoing relationships. The Communications Workers first supported efforts by maquiladora workers in a small Cananea factory, and then established a close relationship with the Mexican Telephone Workers. The ILWU sent delegations, first to Veracruz when its longshore union was smashed, and then to Pacific Coast ports as they were being privatized. The union has a relationship with the Federation of Stevedores there, part of the Revolutionary Confederation of Mexican Workers (CROM). The PRI affiliation of this old, official union, however, is very different from the leftwing culture of the ILWU. While they have a common interest facing their mutual employers — huge shipping companies — neither union has been able to put forward a plan for mutual action.

Editor’s Note: This is the final article of a series on border solidarity by journalist and immigration activist David Bacon. All articles in the series were originally published in the Institute for Transnational Social Change’s report Building a Culture of Cross-Border Solidarity. To download a PDF of the entire report, click here.

ONE indispensable part of education and solidarity is greater contact between Mexican union organizers and their U.S. counterparts. The base for that contact already exists in the massive movement of people between the two countries.

Miners fired in Cananea, or electrical workers fired in Mexico City, become workers in Phoenix, Los Angeles and New York. Twelve million Mexican workers in the U.S. are a natural base of support for Mexican unions. They bring with them the experience of the battles waged by their unions. They can raise money and support. Their families are still living in Mexico, and many are active in political and labor campaigns. As workers and union members in the U.S., they can help win support from U.S. unions for the battles taking place in Mexico.

This is not a new idea. It’s what the Flores Magon brothers were doing for the uprising in Cananea. It’s why the Mexican left sent activists and organizers to the Rio Grande Valley in the 1930s, and to Los Angeles in the 1970s. All these efforts had a profound impact on U.S. unions and workers. The sea change in the politics of Los Angeles in the last two decades, while it has many roots, shows the long-term results of immigrants gaining political power, and the role of politically conscious immigrant organizers in that process.

Today some U.S. unions see the potential in organizing in immigrant communities. But most unions in Mexico, in contrast to the past, don’t see this movement of people as a resource they can or should organize.

What would happen if Mexican unions began sending organizers or active workers north into the U.S.? In reality, active members are already making that move, and have been for a long time. Yet there is no organized way of looking at this. Where, for instance, will the people displaced in today’s Mexican labor struggles go? In 1998, almost 900 active blacklisted miners from Cananea had to leave after their strike that year was lost. Many came to Arizona and California. In Mexico City, 26,000 SME members took the indemnizacion and gave up claim to their jobs and unions. Many of them will inevitably be forced to go to the U.S. to look for work.

Marisela Escobedo’s life changed forever in August 2008 when her 16-year-old daughter Rubi failed to come home. What was left of Rubi’s body was found months later in a dump — 39 pieces of charred bone.

Rubi became one more macabre statistic in Ciudad Juarez’s nearly two-decade history of femicide. The murder of young women, often raped and tortured, brought international infamy to the city long before it became the epicenter of the Calderon drug war and took on the added title of murder capital of the world.

But Rubi never became a statistic for her mother. Marisela knew that a former boyfriend, Sergio Barraza, had murdered her daughter. As authorities showed no interest in investigating the case, she began a one-woman crusade across two states to bring the murderer to justice. The Mexican magazine Proceso recently obtained the file on her case. Marisela’s odyssey tracks a murderer, but it also tracks a system of sexism, corruption, and impunity.

It’s an odyssey that ends with Marisela–the mother–getting her brains blown out on December 16, 2010 as she continued to protest the lack of justice in her daughter’s murder two years earlier.

MEXICO CITY (4/14/11) - Changing labor law sounds like some technical modification, a subject lawyers argue about in musty hearing rooms. In Mexico it's been front-page news for weeks. Changing the country's labor law would transform the lives of millions of workers. It would cement the power of a group of industrialists who have been on the political offensive for decades, and who now control Mexico's presidency and national government.

"Labor law reform will only benefit the country's oligarchs," claims Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who many if not most Mexicans think actually won the last presidential election in 2006, as candidate of the leftwing Party of the Democratic Revolution. Napoleon Gomez Urrutia, head of the miner's union who was forced into exile in Canada in 2006, says Mexico's old governing party, the Party of the Institutionalized Revolution (PRI), which lost control of the presidency in 2000, "is trying to assure its return by making this gift to big business, putting an end to labor rights."

In part, the change is drastic because on paper, at least, the rights of Mexican workers are extensive, deriving from the Revolution that ended in 1920. At a time when workers in the U.S. still had no law that even recognized the legality of unions, Article 123 of the Mexican Constitution spelled them out. Workers have the right to jobs and permanent status once they're hired. If they're laid off, they have the right to severance pay. They have rights to housing, health care, and training. In a legal strike, they can string flags across the doors of a factory or workplace, and even the owner can't enter until the dispute is settled. Strikebreaking is prohibited.

May 1st is observed as International Labor Day by most of the countries of the world. The reason most people believe that May Day is a communist holiday is because corporate America doesn’t want you to even wonder why that day was chosen. It’s because 4 union members were hung in Chicago in 1886 for fighting for the 8-hour day that you take for granted today. If you read this you will know something that probably less that one American in 400 has ever heard about.

On May 1, 1886, there were massive strikes all over America. Months before, The Knights of Labor, the largest union of that day, had said that if their members didn’t get the 8-hour day 6-day week by that date they would call for a nation-wide strike. 20,000 workers actually had it so it was not an impossible dream.

On that day in Chicago 190,000 people demonstrated for the 8-hour day. There were 340,000 people demonstrating nation-wide.

The newspapers were screaming that all unions were communist conspiracies and that the whole idea of an 8-hour day was a foreign conspiracy and an attack on the sanctity of the home. They wrote that it would lead to the degeneration of family life, debauchery, lower wages, increased poverty and social degradation for the American worker. The workers were unimpressed by such warnings.

The press was constantly recommending unlawful violence against any and all strikers. Their solution was to deport the “foreign scum” and take care of the homegrown types with the liberal use of the noose and gattling guns. While newspapers were always calling for “Law and Order” they were often the first to call for citizens to break the law by encouraging them to take the law into their own hands.

is commemorating the anniversary of the Mexican Constitution by demanding a new vision for trade and development.

The incoming local government should respect the Mexican Constitution by promoting jobs with dignity, not cheap labor and disposable workers, and must guarantee that multinationals will be socially responsible.

Press Conference by TRW Workers’ Coalition

When: Friday February 4th, 2011, at 12:00 (noon)

Where: In the main plaza in front of the City Hall in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, Mexico.

To celebrate the anniversary of the Mexican Constitution, which was promulgated on February 5, 1917, and which recognizes the 8-hour workday, freedom of association, the right to a job and a living wage, we are calling for the vindication of our rights and our history and reclaiming our dignity as Mexicans by promoting FAIR TRADE instead of FREE TRADE. NAFTA has been exploiting people for the past 17 years, concentrating wealth in the hands of a few, increasing poverty and migration, detonating violence and social instability AND leading the world to a global crisis.

Negotiations for the industry-wide master union contract for workers that make tires in Mexico are regulated and coordinated by Mexico’s Secretary of Labor every 2 years.

Secretary of Labor Javier Lozano has summoned Continental, Tornel-JK, Bridgestone-Firestone, Michelin, and the unions representing the workers in those global companies to attend the opening contract bargaining session on February 3, 2011. But a few days ago, in an obvious maneuver to bust its workers’ union, Continental sought legal authority to not participate in the negotiations.

The unions that form the Union Rubber Coalition of Mexico challenge Continental’s maneuver as a heavy handed effort to kill the hard earned law that enables rubber workers to have a union contract.

We must not allow global corporations to continue exploiting workers and undermining worker rights in the countries where they operate. Continental's refusal to bargain could force workers across the rubber industry into a national strike.

Please send a letter to Continental telling them to cease this outrageous behavior.